Hartlebury, Worcestershire
Historical Description
Hartlebury, a village and a parish in Worcestershire. The village stands 1½ mile E of the river Severn, 2 miles E by S of Stourport, and 3½ S by E of Kidderminster, and has a station on the G.W.R., and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Kidderminster. The parish contains also the township of Upper Mitton, and the hamlets of Crossway Green, Norchard, Waresley, Chadwick, Titton, Lincomb, Charlton, Wildon, Torton, and Low Hill. Acreage, 5714; population, 3723; of the ecclesiastical parish, 1491. The manor has belonged to the Bishops of Worcester since very early times. Hartlebury Castle, the seat of the bishops, was built in the time of Henry III. by Bishop Cantelupe; was seized and destroyed in 1646 by the Parliamentarian force; was rebuilt after the Restoration, and stands in a park to the W of the village. Ironworks are in Wildon hamlet, near the Worcestershire and Staffordshire Canal. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Worcester, net value, £845. Patron, the Bishop of Worcester. The church was rebuilt in 1836, and is a handsome edifice in the Early English and Decorated styles, with a tower; it was partially restored in 1877. The churchyard contains the tombs of Bishops Hurd, Carr, and Pepys. A mission church for some of the outlying hamlets was erected in 1882 at Bishop's Wood, by Bishop Philpott, who is buried there. Upper Mitton andWildon are included in the ecclesiastical parish of Lower Mitton. There are a Congregational chapel and an endowed grammar school.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Worcestershire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Hartlebury St. James | |
Hundred | Halfshire | |
Poor Law union | Droitwich |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Hartlebury from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Hartlebury (St. James))
Land and Property
The full transcript of the Worcestershire section of the Return of Owners of Land, 1873.
Maps
Online maps of Hartlebury are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Worcestershire papers online:
Villages, Hamlets, &c
Chadwick (Hartlebury)Lincomb
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of Worcestershire 1569 is available on the Heraldry page.